Feeling Butterflies
by SandraDeee
Summary: In this timed writing experiment, a main Passions character muses about what she misses most.


**Author's Note:** I wrote this short story back in 2002 as part of a timed writing experiment. I gave myself thirty minutes to construct a story, and this is what emerged. This story was written during the time that Julian was presumed dead, and Theresa was suspected of being the murderer. She, of course, thought that Ethan did it, so she was willing to go along with protecting him. Please know that I began as a very, very strong Ethan/Theresa fan, but became increasingly disillusioned with the couple when Ethan essentially turned his back on her.

* * *

I long to feel the butterflies again.

Okay. So that's a strange thing to say, but you know what I mean, don't you? It's hard to put into words, but I think everyone has felt it. It's that sensation when someone extraordinary is near. Or perhaps someone enters the room, and you just know it. Without a word, without a glance, you are aware. Then when the glance does come, an understanding passes between the two of you.

I want that again.

I long to feel arms around me again. Reassuring. Comforting. Teasing. Pleasing. Promising. Enticing.

Yes, I like that word enticing. I can use that word. I'm not a virgin anymore. I know what goes on between a man and a woman. Okay, so I'm an almost-virgin, but still not one. I've been with one man for one night.

There. I'm not totally clueless.

In the afterglow, I lay on that blanket spread over the sand, listening to the ocean waves hitting the shore, and I remember telling my lover that he made me a woman.

In a sense, he did, but not by making love to me. He made me a woman by turning his back on me.

But who can blame him?

I did lie to him.

I wasn't perfect.

I wore a mask.

I was scared.

I used to believe that love was boundless, that it held no conditions.

I was wrong.

Everything in life is made of conditions or degrees. The same holds true of love. It's not a fairy tale or romance novel. It's gritty and stormy and painful and it doesn't always work out.

But I still want to feel butterflies.

* * *

"Who are you?"

Good question, my love. You asked me that nearly two years ago, and I'm still trying to figure it out. Who _am_ I?

Oh, but you thought you knew, didn't you? You thought you knew me so well. I thought you knew me, too, but I was wrong. How could you know me when I didn't even know myself? I bent myself to fit you without even realizing it. I deferred to you in matters even when I didn't agree with you. I let you guide me when it was a matter of the blind leading the blind.

I hate myself for it.

I hate you for it.

I love you.

But I don't need you.

My life is so full. Perhaps not in the way I expected, but it's full nonetheless.

No room for you.

No room for me.

No room for dreams and idealism.

No room.

Sometimes I miss the girl I was. I miss the dreams and the hope. I'm a bit more cynical now. I believe that "seasoned" would be the diplomatic term. Nah. I'll stick with cynical. It makes me seem much more a woman of the world.

Still, I do sometimes feel like a little girl. I guess it depends on whom I am around or with whom I am talking . When Luis calls, for example, we fall back into the roles of protector and protectee. He means well, and he loves me. Yet I also know that I'll never be anything other than his little sister. Correction: his little sister that he thinks he needs to protect from herself.

When Mama calls, I can just almost see her frown over the phone. She worries, too. Worries that I'm not taking care of myself. Worries that I'm not always doing the right thing.

Silly Mama. Hasn't she learned by now that by my very nature, I judge a situation and do the complete opposite of what I should do?

I don't speak with Ethan.

I can't. It's too tedious, too painful.

Last I heard, he's engaged to be married.

Perhaps he found another woman to put on a pedestal. Here's to hoping that she's more patient with listening to him drone on about honesty---and that she has nothing to hide.

I knew he would move on. I told him to as I promptly threw my flower vase at him and told him to get out of my hospital room. He had discovered that the Bermuda fiasco had been a set-up by his mommy dearest. He had reviled my actions, pointed his finger at me, and still strung me along for months with talk of how much he loved me, but how we couldn't be together.

Losing our child was painful enough, but when he showed up at the hospital wanting absolution of his guilt, that was the last straw.

He _should _feel guilty.

No one is blameless.

No one was blameless except for the child I was carrying. _Our_ baby. A boy. He would have been named Seth. He would have worn little blue booties and smiled. He would have grabbed onto my hair just as he had already grabbed onto my heart.

He would have been beautiful.

But beautiful things never last.  
Take a flower for instance. It goes from a bud to a blossom and then to a wad of dried up petals in a matter of days.

Or how about a butterfly? From a cocoon, it emerges. It spreads its wings. It flies and knows no boundaries. How beautiful is that?

Yet within a few days, it, too, is gone.

Beautiful things never last, no matter how we try to make them. It's like a child who takes a square block and tries to put it through a circular hole. Some things just don't work.

But that doesn't stop me from wanting to feel butterflies.

Will I?

I don't know.

That depends on so many things, the first and foremost consideration being will I ever get out of here? I sit in my cell twenty-three out of the twenty-four hours in a day.

I used to consider the injustice of it all. For Julian's killer to still be out there while I'm locked in here for that person's crimes...that's been a hard pill to swallow.

Strangely enough, I don't even think about the injustice of it that much anymore.

Haven't I learned by now that life isn't fair?

No, I think about the butterflies.

I long to feel the butterflies again.


End file.
